Multimedia

Narratives

Site Information

Who's Who - Augustin Boue de Lapeyrere

French Admiral Augustin
Boue de Lapeyrere (1852-1924) was a contemporary of, and in many respects as
dynamic as his Royal Navy equivalent, Admiral
John Fisher.
Both were energetic proponents of naval reform.

Similarly both were keen
exponents of battleship construction. Indeed de Lapeyrere, the
dominant French naval figure prior to the First World War, effectively
reversed French strategy in placing submarine (and anti-submarine)
construction firmly secondary to the production of large shipping while
Minister of Marine from 1909-11.

Upon his retirement from
politics in 1911 he was appointed Commander-in-Chief of France's
Mediterranean forces. By agreement with the British the French navy
was concentrated in the Mediterranean while the British guarded France's
Atlantic coast.

In the event war in August
1914 did not bring about the great battleship confrontation he had envisaged
with either Austro-Hungarian or Italian navies, with de Lapeyrere now
Commander-in-Chief of combined French and British naval forces in the
Mediterranean.

Instead Italy remained
neutral - eventually entering the war on the side of the Allies in
May
1915 - and Austria-Hungary chose instead to maintain her force as a
'fleet in being', preferring instead to deploy light vessels in coastal
raids and submarines against Allied commercial interests.

De Lapeyrere was also
criticised in August 1914 for permitting the escape of the German
Mittelmeerdivision into Turkish waters.

For the remainder of his
tenure as Commander-in-Chief - until his sudden resignation on 10 October
1915 - de Lapeyrere found himself chiefly involved in policing the many
thousands of kilometres of Allied commerce sea lanes - an outcome quite
unexpected in the pre-war years.

He also provided what scant
assistance he could to the Allied
Dardanelles expedition, a task rendered
problematic by the French shortage of escort vessels.

Consequently, frustrated
and in ill health, and involved in eternal command squabbles with both
British and Italian allies he chose sudden retirement in October 1915.
Such was the shock of his resignation that President
Raymond Poincare was
prompted to formally deny involvement in forcing de Lapeyrere out of office.
He was replaced by Admiral
Gauchet.